Prop X PDR Bill

BIG ART NIGHTS!Thursday, October 6, 5-6:30 PM2868 Mission St. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts – Prop X Kickoff“Join us for a kickoff celebration and learn more about Proposition X, an effort to preserve the community services, arts and PDR spaces that continue to be converted or demolished at an alarming pace. Help us stop the catastrophic and irreversible loss of the affordable spaces that make our City the place we love!” more: big-art-nights

Yes on X – Protect the Best of San Francisco

Why You Should Support the “Protect the Best of San Francisco”
ballot measure on the November 2016 Ballot – Proposition X

San Francisco’s many diverse Arts Communities and extraordinary Artists have always been a vital focus of the spirit and soul of our City since the California Gold Rush more than 160 years ago.

San Francisco’s many diverse small “PDR” (production, distribution, and repair) businesses have always been a vital sector of its diversified economy and an essential employment base for its working class residents.

San Francisco’s many diverse nonprofit community services organizations provide vital support and assistance to its residents and families of all backgrounds throughout the City everyday.

Many of these Artists, PDR small businesses, and nonprofits are now being literally pushed out of their longtime neighborhoods, and even the entire City, due to today’s 21st Century “San Francisco Gold Rush” that is transforming much of our City into a prohibitively expensive monoculture of the well-to-do that they cannot afford.

This displacement is specifically driven by all the new high-end commercial and housing development that has fueled out-of-control property speculation in the City neighborhoods which have always been the focus of the City’s Arts, PDR business, and community services organizations, the Mission District and the South of Market.

For over 20 years community and neighborhood advocates have urged the City and its Planning Department to enact Planning Code provisions and programs that would protect vulnerable Arts, PDR businesses, and community services organizations from being displaced, or ensure that affordable replacement space is provided for them within their communities.

Despite all their promises over those years, the City and the Planning Department have failed to do so, and instead consistently are rubber-stamping new developments of all kinds that will or have so far torn down over 600,000 square feet of PDR space in the last five years alone.

As a direct result San Francisco now faces a catastrophic, permanent, and irreversible loss of Arts and PDR small businesses, especially in the Mission District and South of Market, and thus the diminution of its civic spirit and soul unless immediate measures are adopted now to slow this down significantly.

At the urging of community groups and advocates, a majority of the City Board of Supervisors has submitted a ballot measure to “Protect the Best of San Francisco” for the November election that requires new developments of all kinds to partially replace the spaces occupied Arts, PDR small businesses, and nonprofit community services that they convert or demolish with new spaces for restricted to the same use.

The “Protect the Best of San Francisco” ballot measure also contains an incentive for the replacement spaces to be truly and permanently affordable by renting at 50% of the market rent.

The “Protect the Best of San Francisco” ballot measure also allows that it can be amended by City ordinance in the future so it can be improved as needed for practical reasons and to better achieve its goals, provided there is a 2/3 consensus vote by the Board of Supervisors to do so.

It is NOW OR NEVER to protect our City’s Arts, Artists, PDR small businesses, and nonprofit community services; therefore, we urge the people of San Francisco to vote Yes to approve it at this November’s election.